AccessComputing News - January 2010: All Articles

A large crowd of family, friends, and community members attended the Community Premiere to honor the ten students who finished the nine-week 2009 Summer Academy for Advancing Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Computing. Held at the University of Washington, this event showcased the animated films the students created. These animation shorts can be viewed at http://www.uw.edu/accesscomputing/dhh/academy/projects.html.

Of course at the Summer Academy it was not always nose to the grindstone working on films and attending computer programming classes. Students also went on field trips to Adobe, Google, Intel, Microsoft, and Valve, where they met employees who are deaf and hard of hearing and work in computing fields. They met the president of Valve and previewed a new game weeks before its release to the general public. Summer Academy students met guest speakers who were deaf and hard of hearing from companies including Viable Video Relay Service, CSDVRS, Oracle, Cray, Group Health, DeafCode, and IBM. The speakers discussed computing jobs and accessible workplaces. Besides academic and career preparation work, the students socialized during activities that included a Ride the Ducks boat tour and a Mariners baseball game.

Academy participants were from Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Texas, Virginia, and Washington. Three were high school students, two were in college, and the rest were recent high school graduates. In addition, two students from the 2008 Summer Academy worked as animation tutors and took a more advanced computer science course than they took in 2008. A student who is deaf from Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) was hired as a teaching assistant for computer programming courses and a resident assistant in the dorms. Additionally, Pam Siebert from IBM in Kansas City stayed for four weeks as a programmer-in-residence.

The Summer Academy has been in operation for three years. I met up with several of our graduates this summer. Updates from two of the participants are summarized below.

Jason, a 2007 Academy alumnus, completed an internship at NASA, where he worked on developing an interactive web page for the Image Science and Analysis Group at the Johnson Space Center in Texas. The web page offers scientists the ability to view images from the space shuttle and International Space Station. Image scientists analyze these images for debris from space shuttle lift-off and re-entry. Jason credits the Summer Academy for giving him a push in the right direction.

Bobby, another 2007 program alumnus, entered the RIT National Technical Institute for the Deaf and was planning to pursue a career as a math teacher then decided to major in filmmaking instead. He acknowledged that participation in the Summer Academy helped him pursue his new career goals. Of particular value was the Summer Academy animation class, including script writing, story development, lighting and shadow, pacing, and editing.

To read an article published in the Seattle Times about the Summer Academy, visit http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2009555657_deafacademy28m.html

For a person with a visual impairment, a computer can initially present some accessibility challenges. However, there are a wide variety of software products available to help people of all abilities access and use a computer. One of the more popular products for people with visual impairments is a screen reader that uses a digital voice to read aloud text that appears on a computer screen. While a very helpful tool in making a specific computer accessible, screen readers are not always installed on public computers in libraries and Internet cafés.

To make speech output available on any computer at any time, University of Washington alumnus Jeffrey Bigham developed WebAnywhere. Anyone can use this product with almost any web browser and operating system, without the need for additional software. WebAnywhere even predicts web content that may interest the user based on the individual's past history, and it pre-loads speech patterns allowing instant audio access to on-screen content.

Unlike many screen readers, WebAnywhere is free of charge. It can be accessed from https://webinsight.cs.washington.edu/wa/.

Bigham was recognized as one of Technology Review's 2009 Young Innovators Under 35 for his creation of WebAnywhere and is currently an assistant professor in the Computer Science department at the University of Rochester.

There are a lot of great reasons for you to work as an intern while you are in college. You'll gain confidence, develop new skills, and improve your resume. You can improve work habits and learn what jobs you may want (or may want to avoid) after graduation.

Employers want experience! They also want to be able contact your former supervisors and hear about your work as they seek out the best and brightest workers. DO-IT's AccessComputing project has helped more than fifty students land paid internship positions in the last year. Some interns also received college credit for their work.

Interns have worked on computer programming, computing research, and in various workshops and labs. Some specific examples of paid internships completed by AccessComputing interns include

• Manager of an assistive technology lab.
• Researcher on iPhone accessibility.
• Microsoft "College Intern Program" participant.
• Computing intern at NASA.
• Computing instructor at a large library.
• Graphic design intern for Popular Science magazine.
• Google programmer.
• Lab instructor for a digital arts project.

Computing students with disabilities nationwide are encouraged to contact DO-IT about paid internships. Opportunities include computing research on college campuses, computing projects for companies, and opportunities to work for government agencies and non-profit organizations. Request more information by sending a message to doit@uw.edu.

Several participants in the AccessComputing project, including three AccessComputing Team members, presented at the Technology and Disability in the Developing World conference held at the University of Washington (UW) this fall. The presentation was coordinated through Change, a UW group that explores how technology can improve the lives of underserved populations in the developing world.

Conference topics included the following:

• Overview of the distribution of people with disabilities and of computer and mobile technologies for people with disabilities in developing countries.
• Discussion of low-cost technologies, universal design possibilities, and the role of advocacy groups in technology adoption.
• Clarification of the basic technological status of people with disabilities around the world in order to see how this topic fits into larger political, social, and research agendas.
• Discussion of essential computer access technologies for people who are blind that included access barriers and potential solutions.
• Discussion of natural signed language as an important and relatively inexpensive strategy for people who are deaf.
• Review of deaf technology around the world, its current usages, and its potential in the developing world.
• High-level overview of current speech-based technologies and interaction methods, and how they may apply to people with motor impairments or in hands-busy situations in the developing world.
• Information regarding how people with disabilities use mobile phones to enhance independence.

For more information, consult: http://change.washington.edu.

In summer 2009, a dozen students attended a five-day Web Accessibility Workshop to learn how to evaluate the accessibility of websites and computer applications. Wendy Chisholm was the instructor. The students spent time discussing what it means for technology to be accessible and developed a set of criteria to measure the accessibility of a website. After measurable criteria were determined, the students learned about a variety of tools that are used to determine accessibility. Finally, students learned how to document their test results to provide constructive feedback to website developers and managers. Throughout the workshop, students evaluated actual websites to determine their accessibility. The class curriculum is available at https://files.getdropbox.com/u/3401/doit-wat/unit%201/module%201/lesson1.html.

A few students were selected to become paid Interns. The Interns evaluated the accessibility of twenty-five different academic computing departments' websites. These websites had been evaluated several years prior to the 2009 Interns' evaluation. The goal was to determine if the websites had become more or less accessible, or if there had been no change since the previous evaluation. Findings from this evaluation will be sent to the website managers. The evaluation form is available at http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dDB3NVliOXVUN05obzR0bDBJV1o4UlE6MA.

If you would like the accessibility of your website evaluated, contact Wendy Chisholm at chiswa@uw.edu.

The next wave of HTML, called HTML5, is in development by the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). HTML5 is an important step for web accessibility, because it is the first time that people with disabilities have been included in the web language development process from the beginning. Two very different cultures are learning how to work together, and it's both exciting and frustrating.

Accessibility advocates are educating engineers about the technological needs of people with disabilities. Although the engineers can be hard to convince, when they "get it," they often come up with very cool solutions.

On the other hand, when they don't get it and want to move forward with something that is not accessible, it is frustrating. In the past, accessibility has been thrown out for the sake of progress. Once this happens, it is difficult to implement accessibility at a later stage of development.

With HTML5 going into the next development phase, a group of developers and designers from the web standards movement decided to meet to develop feedback for the HTML5 specification. For two days in early August, Dan Cederholm, Tantek Çelik, Jeremy Keith, Ethan Marcotte, Eric Meyer, Nicole Sullivan, Jeffrey Zeldman, and I gathered at Happy Cog Studios in New York City to talk about HTML5. This is a who's who of standards-based web development, and I was honored to be invited to such a powerhouse of a group!

We dubbed ourselves the HTML5 Super Friends and wrote the Super Friends Guide to HTML5 Hiccups as well as a statement that endorses the direction HTML5 is heading. Most of us have written our own blog posts about the issues and advantages we found in the specification. I list my concerns at http://sp1ral.com/2009/08/html-5/.

The reaction to our comments was good. We even appeared in an issue of CSSquirrel, an online comic strip that provides perspective on the politics of web design and standards development at http://www.cssquirrel.com/comic/?comic=35.

Recently, the HTML Working Group met for two days in Santa Clara, California to talk about some of the outstanding issues that need to be addressed before the HTML5 specification can move into the next phase. I attended one day and was happy to see good progress being made on some of the trickier accessibility issues. We aren't out of the woods yet, but the engineers seem open to most of our concerns. Keep your fingers crossed.

In the last two years, the following projects have received funding through AccessComputing minigrants. Congratulations to all of these recipients for conducting successful projects!

Projects:

Accessibility Awareness Training Workshop was organized at the University of Maryland Baltimore County to familiarize faculty, staff, and teaching assistants with academic issues affecting students with disabilities.

• Alice in Roboland project at Auburn University was integrated into a hands-on technology and science summer camp.
• Assistive Technology Expo was held at the University of Wisconsin–Madison to promote computing/IT careers.
• Capacity Building Institute was brought to Commonwealth Alliance for Information Technology Education to increase the capacity of computer science and information technology programs to fully include and increase the representation of students with disabilities.
• Computer Literacy Academy for Children with Disabilities at Auburn University provided children with disabilities the opportunity to improve computer, communication, cognitive, and social skills.
• Computing Science Road Show was developed at Southern Oregon University to travel to five high schools to recruit students to study computing in college and provide accessible technology tools.
• EAST-2 Computing Institute was held at University of Southern Maine to increase the representation of individuals with disabilities in computer science fields.
• Idaho Partnership on Higher Education at Eastern Idaho Technical College coordinated a conference of practitioners to discuss working with veteran students to make campuses more accessible.
• Increasing STEM Lab Accessibility course was organized at the University of Southern Maine to integrate adaptive technology into a university class.
• Promoting Computer Science to Students with Visual Impairments through Game Programming collaborative event between the Rochester Institute of Technology and Auburn University was held to promote interest in computing for students with visual impairments.
• Return to Learn for Veterans Course was held at Missouri Southern State University to encourage and support veterans with disabilities to succeed in higher education and careers in the computer/technology field.
• Roadshows, Tours and TechNights for Children with Hearing Loss event was held at Carnegie Mellon University to provide computing-related information to students and expose children to basic technology skills.
• Robotics Track at the National Federation of the Blind Youth Slam was organized at the Rochester Institute of Technology to provide students with team working experiences while learning robotics programming
• Scripting Enabled event at the University of Washington brought together developers, researchers, and students with disabilities to develop web accessibility solutions.
• Summer Computing Institute was held at the University of Rhode Island for students with disabilities to promote their interest in college courses and careers related to computing.
• Technology and Disability in the Developing World conference was held at the University of Washington to expand the interest of computer science and engineering students in researching and designing low-cost technologies for people with disabilities.
• VET Support for Tallahassee Community was created at Florida State University to conduct a capacity-building institute to create community support and awareness for veterans.
• You Can DO-IT High School Transition Event at Eastern Idaho Technical College held two separate events for students with disabilities to learn more about the college experience.

Individuals:

• Accessing Higher Ground 2009
  Attended by: One faculty and one staff member from Eastern Idaho Technical College's Computer Network Technician and Web Development Programs.
• CSUN 2009
  Attended by: Assistive Technology Coordinator at Boise State University; AccessComputing team member and employee from Yahoo!; and Technology and Production Support Services representative from Oregon State University, who also delivered a presentation.
• U.S. Department of Defense's Worldwide Education Symposium
  Attended by: Ten employees from Georgia State University's Veterans Coordinating Council.